


notes on staying

by tamaslin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn, and like. other gay shit., it better be episode 60 before any of them actually hold hands so this is reflecting that, there's gonna be kissing eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 04:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamaslin/pseuds/tamaslin
Summary: he's a shifting shape, a lesson in changing faces / he's a brightly lit sign, demanding to not be forgottenor, there's nothing better than the 'sharing a room' trope turning into something more





	1. midnight espionage

**Author's Note:**

> i 100% blame my friend for sparking my inspiration for this. idk how long this'll be but hold my hand and we'll all make it out okay (hopefully)

The word ‘distraction’ ought to have been somewhere in Mollymauk’s name. Followed by reckless, careless, hazardous to one’s health - 

Fjord’s pulled from his list by the panic in Nott’s face where she rests in Caleb’s arms right before the pair are booted from the infirmary. ‘Get out, get out,’ she mouths but their mission wasn’t done. The mission that had been lost somewhere between ‘I have a plan’ and Mollymauk’s blood on the floor. Lost alongside with his cool when his coughing pauses and he sees their troupe missing one vibrant coat.

_Mission, Molly._

It’s easy enough in the chaos to sneak away and change shape easily as turning clothes inside out. A wave of his hand and his form shrinks, armor turns to clean linens and all he’s really hoping for is a handful of paper that can be used the next night. He’s not a praying man but Fjord finds his hopes being offered to a giant yellow eye, lidless compatriot who guides his breath. There’s no chance to check hopes or prayers when he sees the doctor heading back his way. Like so many times before he’s a single face among the mayhem. Weaves out of the chaos as easily as he did his days in Port Damali.

_Don’t look back. You never look back._

Glass shatters and the sound should send him running the other direction. Now the leather of his armor chafes beneath illusory white robes as he sprints to the window that shattered and catches the familiar coat in a heap beneath it. Glass and sequins glitter in the light from arcane lamps that dot the street and there’s little time before Fjord hears the pounding of feet. The call of guards.

He’s at Mollymauk’s side and helping him to his feet before there’s time to think. To plan. _’I have a plan.’_ Was it just an hour earlier that the tiefling spoke those words with such confidence? Fjord wonders what bravado feels like face first in the ground.

The guards are coming. 

He has a breath to take before they arrive and he turns into an attendant with concern creasing the space between his brows. He almost calls out to them when there’s a flash of red and sequin. A shape throwing himself fully into Fjord.

Were it not for his reflexes, Molly would’ve been dropped but instead Fjord cradles him in arms shaking from the sudden strain of a body in them. Reek of eggs and alcohol, the scent of his usual incense buried beneath whatever concoction he’d crafted. (He tries not to dwell on whatever mess lies beneath his coat – is grateful beyond words that part of the plan didn’t come into play) Mollymauk is still laughing with his head buried against Fjord’s chest and despite the situation, beneath the illusion he feels the green of his cheeks heat and darken.

A silent prayer to his days at sea, to every lesson learned to grease dockworkers and charm innkeepers, when the guards see him point and follow his honest face, his trustworthy words. They don’t look twice at the lavender-skinned, shaking being in his arms. When they leave he drops Mollymauk in an instant. Grabs onto his shoulder and pulls him along.

“Come on, we gotta go.”

They leave their chaos behind but the heat stays in Fjord’s face.

\-----

The phrase ‘an hour’ had dug its claws into Fjord’s mind as they wait for the rest of the Nein to leave the house.

The third guard to pass them almost makes him jump out of his skin but Mollymauk has found his ease within the shadows. Vibrant coat muted in the alley, untouched by the setting sun as he shuffles his cards. He does a full shuffle six times in a minute. Fifteen minutes have passed and the rhythmic sound of card to card almost lulls Fjord into forgetting where they stand, what they need to do.

_An hour._

They’d been traveling together for long enough for the half-orc to recognize the curve of Molly’s crooked smile when it spelled a wicked plan. It was supposed to be simple. Into the hospital, grab the documents, out of the hospital.

He should have known ‘simple’ didn’t fit circus folk.

There was chaos and fake illnesses and too many close calls to make his skin feel secure and on top of it all – Mollymauk and his wild laughter, glass still in his coat and hair. _I jumped out of a window! Like, full glass. It was great._ The look on his face when he said it you’d think he won a bet against every god on his coat. 

“Fjord, pick a card.” Lilting voice draws Fjord’s attention from the house, the gate, to where deft hands toss cards back and forth before they’re fanned out. Offered to him with their heavy painted backs. His nose tickles when he leans closer, Frumpkin curled around Molly’s shoulders enough to irritate the back of his throat. Damn cat did come in handy, though.

“Any card?”

“Any card.” His smile is a white slice through the darkness when Fjord reaches out.

There’s a memory of Trostenwald in the back of his head – Jester’s amazement as the cards spell out her fate in simplest terms. He pulls a single card and feels the raised layers of paint on the tips of his fingers. When he flips the card, his stomach drops. 

A fire consuming a building. Bodies dropping from the windows but what catches him is the yellow of the flames. Bright, the way they wrap around the base of the building for a moment form the familiar shape of an eye he’s seen in his dreams. A voice growling low across his memory and the sensation of water in his lungs. He blinks and the image becomes just a painted building on a card. There’s no water, no eyes save Molly’s as they take in the image flipped up between them.

“You lost everything.” It isn’t the same light tone he used with Jester and there’s no laughter like when he leapt through the window. Pure red gaze flicks up to Fjord’s face as though he’s no longer reading the card but the scars that cut across his face.

(For a moment he’s younger, inspected for everything he is and is not. His skin feels like clothes he’s outgrown and for a moment he wonders if Molly can sees through the illusion cast over his face.)

“You’re starting over, but that kind of damage won’t leave you. You’re given a chance to start over and sometimes it’s best to leave the fire behind.” 

“Ain’t never seen a building on fire before. You sure these cards are right?” There’s the wreck, the sound of wood splintering beneath his feet. Water in his lungs. An eye staring at him with the same intensity that Mollymauk stares at him with.

The tiefling is about to open his mouth to speak when a voice cuts across their minds. Familiar shrill yell of Nott, triumph ringing clear even across the distance.

_’We are the fucking best, you can respond to this message.’_

Molly’s tattooed hand goes up to scratch Frumpkin behind the air as Fjord returns the card back to the deck. Clears his throat of the tension that filled his lungs.

“They’re doing good,” Fjord comments and the energy that thrummed between them vanishes. Molly’s gaze shifts back to the house and they find their peace in the quiet again.

Six times in a minute, the rhythm of the cards is the only sound between them again but now Mollymauk peeks at the cards every so often. Pulls one and Fjord can feel red eyes burning into the side of his face. Shuffle. Card. Stare.

He’s about to ask how honest a deck of cards can be when again Nott’s voice cuts across his mind. The triumph is gone. Replaced with panic and distant sound of a struggle. _Remember the hospital? That._

“Goin’ as well as the hospital.” Fjord narrates for Mollymauk right as the tiefling draws another card. Ivy around a rose and a lily. Pale purple thumb traces the knot the ivy forms in the center of the card before he responds.

“Seems fair.”

More time in silence and Fjord glances at Mollymauk from his periphery. Dim light of the arcane streetlamps catch the edge of his profile. The hook of his nose and the stern press of his lips with each card he draws. Eyelashes brush against the tops of his cheeks when he blinks. He turns into a painting when he doesn’t speak. A subtle shifting statue of something from a different time. There’s words to describe him but they catch in Fjord’s throat. Rest on the tip of his tongue until Mollymauk’s voice cuts through the quiet, his vibrant gaze flashing up to the house and it’s then Fjord notices the guards making their way through the street just as Beauregard flashes blue across the rope.

“We may need to distract them.” The cards are slipped into the pouch at his belt and Frumpkin is dumped from his shoulders. “Go, go fuck with the dog.”

The cat dashes off and Molly shifts his attention to Fjord just as the half-orc takes a step in the direction of the guard.

“Do you wanna go out?”

He’s still thinking of the way light hit Mollymauk’s cheekbone when the question is asked and it stops his step. “What?”

“Do you wanna distract the guard?”

“Oh, yeah. Of course.”

He jogs out as he catches the sound of cards shuffling at his back and he draws himself up to his full height. Man of the law, shoulders back and the guards are fooled enough to follow him just as he hears Molly’s voice catch the other two. Carries the same dancing tone as when he asked Fjord to pick a card in the alley. 

He wonders if they’ll be caught in his red eyes. If it’ll be enough to keep the other’s safe.

He turns a corner with his two guards just as he hears something hit the ground hard and Molly exclaim ‘There you are, dear!’and his heart sinks. His own guards easy enough to mislead with more pointing, the lies coming easily to his lips and he circles back to the group. Without Jester. Without Mollymauk.

 _Mission first._ But he can’t help the exhale of relief when he sees Molly meeting them at their next stop. Hopes for the best when he lays his coat and cards out on the street when Fjord leads the way for Jester into the High Richter’s home.

When the fireball goes off and leaves only charred bones at the base of the stairs, he thinks of the card heavy in his hand. Mollymauk’s red gaze meeting his (in the distance he hears singing in a familiar voice) _You lost everything._

 _You’re getting a chance to start over._ In the distance the Zauber Spire sits at an impossible angle as they sprint to the sewers and all the while Fjord keeps looking over his shoulder to the flash of a sequined coat, the fear looking an awful lot like the excitement of jumping through a window.

A chance to start over. They vanish into the sewer as a group, the fire left behind.


	2. ghosts live at night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (spoilers for episode 14 if you haven't seen it yet!)

_I don’t really know how to tell this story._

Their room is the quiet energy of a space where no one is sleeping. Mollymauk lays on his back on the floor, staring up to the ceiling and falling into the rhythmic lines of plaster and wood. In the bed he hears Fjord’s breathing steady as a drum but each shift is the movement of a man restless as he feels.

_I wasn’t speaking. Empty, over and over again for the first week._

There are nights that reach closer into the space between who he is and who he was. Remind him that grave dirt didn’t purify all that he had been from his blood. (If only the holy light from his veins would burn away the memories that aren’t his anymore. If only he could wash his hands fully of the person who held this form before him.)

“Do you remember what he looks like?”

Fjord’s voice cuts across the space between their beds and Mollymauk knows what he means in the weight following the Evening Nip. _Lucien._ Kree’s voice echoing a dead man’s name rings between his ears. Him and not him. Present and past in a single room, a single form and his coat felt too heavy. Sewn together with all that he could find of himself.

“A bit.” His reply takes too long and Fjord makes a sound like he’d been woken from his slumber. _’Let it drop. Don’t keep speaking. You worked hard for this.’_ But there’s something in the dark that reminds him too much of the dirt and when he inhales to remind himself he can still breathe, the words spill onto an empty grave.

“My hair was shorter. And I didn’t have these.” He pauses to gesture at the tattoos in the dim light. Glances to where Fjord’s eyes reflect like lanterns in the dark. “Not as attractive as I am now, by far.”

There’s laughter from the other side of the room. “Yeah, betcha blended in better.”

“Now, let’s not go too far.” He laughs, too, but there’s something heavy in the half-orc’s tone. Heavier than his gaze in the dark. (Mollymauk wonders if he can see beneath his skin. Into his bones and heart and selfish soul. To where his blood sings, _this is my body. This is my body_. Wonders which part makes the distance between them too much and not enough)

Caught between lamp light and graveyard dirt, silence falls again. Mollymauk’s eyes match Fjord’s in the dark – it’s a conversation being had that neither have the words for.

“What about your hair?” Molly has to speak or else silence begins to feel too much like being alone. He means to say, _’I want to know where your mind goes at night, too.’_

“Been the same for as long as I can recall.” _‘It’s a place no one but I belong in. It’s a life only for me.’_

He can’t find the double speak for _trust me_ so he settles for, “It suits you.” And there’s silence, but it feels like the ocean.

The truth is vicious, the truth allows for no bliss or ignorance to soften the weight of the world. But Fjord’s presence feels an awful lot like pretending. Mollymauk stares at his profile where he lays in the bed. Clean appearance, the lower jaw devoid of tusks. 

_You’re a liar, too, aren’t you? You understand. Tell me you understand._

Yasha does. She’s an honest woman but she knows his illusions are all that keep him together most days. Understands that there’s a distinction between the deceit he lays upon the world and the one he holds up like a mirror to his own mind. Fjord changes his face easy as Molly changes his tone, easy as the seasons come and go. _The old man, the crownsguard, the noble soul and the confident gambler._ He understands.

“Well.” Again the low accented drawl cuts through the room. “Thank you. For tellin’ us all.”

“It would’ve been more dangerous to keep it from you all. Don’t make me out to be some noble sort. You may start to expect it from me.”

“Wouldn’t go that far,” the half-orc’s easy laughter brings a smile to Molly’s lips in the dark. It’s not an ‘I understand’ but it is enough. “But I uh. Y’know, we’re a team now. If you ever need to talk?”

“I’ll wake you up.” _’It’s not that I need to talk. Some nights I need to scream for the ghost in my bones to leave. I need whatever was buried in the dirt to stay down. Do you know what that’s like? When you spit up salt water, did you pray that your past was leaving you? Do you understand?’_ “Thank you, Fjord. Really.”

“Don’t mention it.” And he’s turning over, the smooth line of his shoulders all Mollymauk catches in the dark. He closes his eyes, traces that image over and over in his mind and hopes it replaces the taste of graveyard dirt in his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> consistent updates are 4 straight people, we write when the inspiration hits and that's It  
> (don't expect regular updates but they will Happen i promise. i had most of this already written when i published the first chapter)


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